Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1875 — Forging Tools. [ARTICLE]

Forging Tools.

A correspondent of the Scientific American, who has had much experience in forging tools, writes to that paper as follows: My experience has been that no amount of skill and care in hardening and tempering can make a right down good tool of one not judiciously forged. In forging bring the steel to a mellow heat, and keep it so until you have your tool forged to shape. As the heat declines to black hot compact your steel by light hammering on the face of the tool, but do not hammer the tool edgewise. Now if the tool is ready to harden, when it is heated it will swell so as to loosen up the compacting that was done by light hammering as it was cooling off. So it follows that whatever will harden the steel at the least heat will do it the best. I use strong cold brine and want it near the fire, so as to utilize all the heat in the tool. As soon as the tool is cool I dip . it in oil (sperm or whale oil preferred). Now hold the tool over a well-burnt-down fire without the wind on. Hold the tool so as to retain as much of the oil on it as possible. Now tip it up slightly so as to make the oil flow from over the hottest part to the edge. Thejoil becomes a carrier of heat, and will help to let down the temper (exactly alike everytime) from any thick part to a delicate cutting edge. I think the color that comes on the steel under hot oil can be depended upon much more than without oil, although it (the color) will be a little tardy. In letting down the temper I want to do it slow enough at last so that I can lay down the tool to cool off and not have to dip it again. But if it is going too slow I invert it and dip the body part and leave the edge out. There are very few tools in which I like to leave heat enough in the body to let down the temper with, for this reason: as I grind back on the tool the cutting edge is apt to get a little farther from the outsiae film of refined steel. This film is harder than the steel under it, so I would leave the tool slightly harder a little way back from the end; whereas, if you run out heat enough from the body of the tool you will very soon be at work with a tool altogether too soft. —“lf you dare to play marbles for keeps again,” said Mr. Hurtlescamp to his eldest boy, “ 11l whip you within an inch of your life.” And then Mr. Hurtlescamp went on 'Change and lifted up his voice at the call board, and raised his hand and shook it in the air, and got red in the face as he cried: “Sixty-sevenl sixty-seven! for 50,000 cash or August I Put up or shut up! Sixty-seven cents a bushel, cash!” —Half a ton of raspberries are packed and shipped daily during their season by a small fhiit-packer of Bangor, Me.